


Swing, Pattern, Snow, Dragon, Ash, Overgrown, Legend

by motelsamndean (whalesandfails)



Series: Spntober Fics [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Not Related, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2019-10-12
Packaged: 2020-12-14 05:01:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21010139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whalesandfails/pseuds/motelsamndean
Summary: One week of the spntober prompts made into a 7-part story. Sam finds Dean on a swingset in rural America, he's seen him in his dreams and knows he has to follow the green-eyed boy and his father. He doesn't know why and he doesn't know for how long, just that the searing visions want him to, and he hopes they won't lead him astray.





	1. Prompt October 9: Swing

Dad pulled into the motel lot and Dean saw the same shaggy-haired boy on the swing set across the street that had been there all week. He always looked up when they pulled into the dusty lot, but everyone always looked, the two black metallic beasts of cars were eye-catching even when they were shut off and not growling with rumbling pleasure. It had been quick glances every day, and Dean was used to seeing people startle at the sight of Baby and Dad’s car, but never quite so twitchily. Dean remembered that sometimes monsters were just people. And they could do terrible things, even to boys. 

“Packed?” Said Dad. And when Dean nodded he pulled away. But Dean couldn’t take his eyes off the boy, felt that even though the hunt was done, his job in this town wasn’t. He thought maybe it was the kid. 

He sauntered over to the playground, and the crunch of his shoes on the gravel lot should have told the boy he was coming closer, but he didn’t look up. He actually seemed to shut himself down further, trying to appear smaller – but he was gangly and tall, and even though his shoulders looked like bird wings bowed over something holy, he still took up more space than he wanted to. 

Dean had a few ways of appearing nonthreatening, could crouch down and look him in the eyes, could stop a few feet away and talk to him from afar, could touch hand to frail shoulder and ask if he was all right. This time he sat down on the second swing and began pumping his legs and thinking of anything but the way the boy’s long brown hair glistened even on this overcast day. Wondered what colour his eyes were. 

“I’m Dean,” he said. And he sounded like his father. All hard edges and gruff, terrible knowledge. He cleared his throat and tried again; softer, sweeter. “What’s your name?” 

He met glowing eyes. Well – no. Not glowing. Not monstrous, just beautiful. Yellow flecks nestled in the blues and greens of a still pond. Sunlight filtered through large, old trees. A secret place, unknowable, the kind of depth where you didn’t know if you’d ever hit the bottom. “Sam.” The boy said. And held his gaze. 

Dean turned away, pumped his legs and looked up into the gathering clouds. There was a storm on the horizon. He mouthed the name on his tongue, and it felt familiar, although he couldn’t remember the last Sam he knew. 

“Like the car?” Dean asked. 

“I recognized them. Both of them. I saw you coming. In my dreams.” He looked at Dean then, scared and vulnerable. Someone had hurt him for saying things like this before, and the way he blurted them, quick and frantic, he knew he’d been itching to speak for days. 

“In your… Dreams?” Dean asked. He was used to lots of things, lots of supernatural undercurrents running through the world. Hell, the monster they had just killed wasn’t in any books he could find, and when he called it a bogpire – because that’s what it was, a blood-sucking bog monster – dad had just snorted and said no, Dean like he was too stupid and silly to even entertain his thoughts. 

Dean looked back over and saw Sam nodding. Bangs covering his eyes, but they were staring resolutely at the ground. He mumbled, “I think you’re going to take me with you.” And Dean looked around, then. Saw the old backpack stuffed full and the book rolled into the water bottle holder, saw the way Sam pulled his hoodie down to cover rings of bruises around fragile wrists. 

Oh… Oh, damn. 

He knew he should ask Dad, should run across the lot and call CPS. But something pulled in his chest, like heavy shackles clicking shut, like a vice both unbearable and familiar in its weight. And he couldn’t ask Dad, because he couldn’t risk a “no” as an answer. 

Dean knew to trust his gut. So he just shrugged to himself, and picked up the boy’s pack, was halfway across the street before asking “you coming?” And there was a brief smile on Sam’s face – and it was fucking beautiful. 

Dean has kissed girls and asked them for things they wanted to give but pretended not to. He had offered old ladies hands to hold and to aid. Dean had earned lots of smiles, but never one like this. The stark white of teeth against tan freckled skin like a supernova, Sam’s face changing from stoic to angelic in a fragment of a second. Dean would don the fool’s jacket to see those upturned lips again; and again and again. 

Sam practically vaulted from the swing, and then cowered in on himself to hide his enthusiasm. He was an inch or two shy of Dean’s height, Sam’s nose at his chin, but the way he tucked into himself he really only came up to his shoulder. They walked across the street, Dean’s swaggering stride, and Sam’s soft shuffle. Baby’s door opened with a whining creak, and they both slid in, Sam scooting over on the bench seat, but not all the way to the window, within Dean’s reach. 

“It was an apotampkin.” Sam said, after he was nestled in, and oh god did he look like he belonged there. “Not a bogpire, an apotampkin.” Dean stared at the empty swings across the road, saw them sway in the wind and clang together, almost holding for a moment before being swept apart again. And okay, yeah – he’d take this kid with him everywhere. Anywhere. Forever.


	2. Prompt October 10: Pattern

Dad only raised a cursory eyebrow at the next truck stop when Dean stepped out of the car and a lanky teenager with lost eyes was tucked under his arm, talking of the beauties of American diners. The slummier the façade the better the grease. Sam wasn’t the first person they had picked up – not by far. But he was the first one waiting for them with a packed bag. It wasn’t until Dean had a basket of fries and they came flying out of his mouth in small potato chunks when he snapped his fingers at his father and said “apotampkin!” with finger guns for emphasis. 

Dad just rolled his eyes, murmured “of course” under his breath, and rustled around in his jacket to find the journal. Only after he had rapidly scrawled a page and a half of notes with a small short-stroked sketch of the fanged beast did he realise that Sam’s fingers were itching across the stained linoleum counter towards the leather tome and perhaps his son hadn’t suddenly remembered the Native American monster in the few hundred miles from the deadbeat town to here. Perhaps…. 

“How’d you know?” He asked Sam, the first time he had addressed him. He didn’t even take the time to know his name. 

“My name’s Sam.” He answered, all snark and brittle heat. 

John just shrugged as if names didn’t matter; when clearly they did because his book was littered with them, both monstrous and human. But the look in his eyes told a different story. A glance passed between father and son that said more than they could possibly utter from their tongues – it was a fear, a hesitancy. There had been girlfriends, and friends, and hitchhikers, and many of them didn’t last more than a few months. Some couldn’t live in the normal world anymore knowing what lurked in the dark, others had always known and just wanted to be around others that did, too, no matter the risk. They weren’t sure yet where Sam fell, for how long he’d known, but John would try his damnedest to forget Sam’s name until he lasted more than a few months, until he wasn’t another civvie they couldn’t fucking save. 

Sam tried to hold Dad’s gaze but it was metallic and sharp, and he conceded by answering: “the pattern. Tri-lunar cycle.” Both John and Dean sighed, and Dean actually palmed his forehead with a smack. John rewarded him with his answer by sliding his beer over to Sam and raising his hand to order another. Sam realised it meant he could stay – for how long, and what for, he didn’t know. But it was enough for now.

As he sipped it the bubbles tingled on his lip, and he caught Dean’s sidelong glance before the older boy swung an arm over the back of their booth, could feel his fingertips glancing across his bony exposed collarbones, pinpoints of heat on Sam’s cold soul. He couldn’t meet Dean’s eye, but he had enough time to work up to that.


	3. Prompt October 11: Snow

Sam had a searing vision a week and four days into driving south on a winding serpentine route chasing salt and burns, when his eyes shut he could still see the heavy snow falling and waterfalls near signs labelled Lake Superior. The Devil’s Kettle. Even the name sounded ominous. So they turned tail and soldiered back north. 

The routine in the car was simple: Sam sat shotgun and tried not to dream of Dean. Dad drove ahead or behind but they always met for lunch and dinner. 13:00 and 19:00. They were impossible to miss, the way they growled and thundered into town. Sam had kept his jeans and tees, but Dean’s four flannels were now split between two teen boys and somehow neither minded when they needed a wash. Sam didn’t realize how well you got to know someone from spending half the day in a car with them and the other half in a twelve by eight motel room. He knew the way Dean’s eyes stretched wide when he saw a ghost, and he knew the way he pressed ice to Sam’s shotgun recoil bruise. Tender and methodical, he didn’t know how to stop from falling in love with that medical press of palm to back to hold the peas tight in place, chill at his front and heat as his back, Dean’s smile so alluring he swore his bruise bloomed brighter, blood seeking failingly, trapped under fragile touch-starved skin. 

Then baby’s heat broke down halfway through Missouri eighty miles after the snow started to fly. Dean had a parka stowed wrapped around Baby’s spare tire in the boot, but nothing for Sam. The next motel was shy a comforter when they pulled out of town. 

Sam sat in the middle of the bench and tried to keep warm, blanket pulled taut over both their laps. Dean’s arm around his shoulders and the way he would bang his elbow against Sam’s head every time he needed to reach out and change gears. 

Then – Sam started to speak. 

Quiet murmurs into the frosty air, a confessional susurrus he couldn’t keep from his lips. He watched the way the fog from his breath mingled with Dean’s in the small cabin of their car, stared at the way it stirred when Dean hitched in a breath from his words or the heat from a sentence long held dispelled into the air. Of a dad with no mom, of nights left alone. Of the litany of “ain’t no such thing, Samson” every time he tried to warn his father of his dreams. Of the bruises he could use to find his way home, no roadmap required. Of the grasping of wrists and the swinging of boots, of the noise of leather on skin and the chafe of callouses around his neck. Of the loneliness of the library, of the friends between pages. Of dreams of Dean before he had a name for the face. He swore he could feel Dean’s mouth on his scalp, tongue on his part, for miles and miles as the snow fell around their car, aching whine of the wipers building something up in his chest, a keening sound at the back of his throat and in the roots of his teeth. But no, Dean mustn’t have, for although the road was straight he would need to keep an eye on the spiraling black as it whipped by underneath of them. But Sam swore he felt those lips press tight into lonely skin for hours before he succumbed to sleep.


	4. Prompt October 12: Dragon

“When I said I wanted to heat up, this wasn’t what I had in mind!” Dean shouted over the inferno blazing before them. The beast was tall and lean and serpentine and looked nothing like the illustrations Sam had knew. It looked like a Komodo dragon standing on its hind legs, awkward and deadly. But of course it was – a dragon that is. And Sam realized sometimes myth combined with legend. People just wished the things they feared were larger, the guilt at how demons imagined and real ate away at sanity made the beasts of legend stand stories tall. Or maybe this was a baby. 

They had no sword forged with dragon’s blood, but Sam was convinced he could make one if given the time. He had a short dagger in his palm already covered in red oozing liquid he was sure was blood; at least – it appeared on the blade when he slashed the thing’s tail while John and Dean distracted it. It was dribbling down his arm and he could feel it burning into his skin, acidity eating away at his skin, he could feel the heat of it in his nostrils. 

He ran into the burning building, ignoring the “Sam! No!” that trailed in his wake. He glanced back once surrounded by flame, and Dean didn’t move closer. He swore Sam looking at home among the blaze. Sam’s eyes searched around the dilapidated structure, trying to find where the fire was burning hottest. Ah – there! A corner was reduced to rubble and was smoldering hot, red-white. Sam plunged his knife-brandishing hand into the coals. 

He screamed. It was agony. Nothing separated his hand from the heat. He could feel the leather grip on the blade turn sticky, then molten. The blood on his arm began sizzling, evaporating into the smoky air. He choked in a sob, and tried to look past his watering eyes to the small dagger in his hand – it was starting to glow. 

When it turned whiter than the coals he pulled it out. His hand was blistered and he didn’t know if the knife would be permanently adhered to his skin. He tried not to laugh from the shock of it, but he looked like a cartoon pirate. There wasn’t a speck of blood on the metallic edge, nor on the handle. He only had frantic hope that this would work. 

Running out of the flames, he saw that the dragon had cornered Dad against the fire-ridden shack and Dean was clutching a dislocated shoulder, blood streaked on his face, blistering his nose even as he stood and screamed at the beast. The monster had slashes on its chest and hind legs, but didn’t seem to be slowing. Sam gulped in a few breaths of fresh air before sprinting at the fight, hand aloft. 

He leapt into the air and stabbed the dragon in the throat. He heard a wet gurgle as he passed through windpipe and vein, screamed in terror and pain, and dragged the blade down the neck of the beast, acidic blood spilling onto his already-damaged hand in a rushing river of tormenting burn. The dragon’s step faltered, and it swayed forward before tumbling backwards, Sam met Dean’s gaze as he was crumpled beneath the overwhelming weight. He passed out.


End file.
